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The Economic Survey of India 2025-26, tabled in Parliament by Union Minister of Finance, Nirmala Sitharaman on January 29, 2026, pressed the need to reshape the gig economy, recognising the growing workforce and the increasing challenges it faces.
It underlined that, the “goal of gig-economy policy should be to reshape the terms so that workers exercise real choice rather than being pushed into gigs due to weak demand, skill mismatch, or the absence of a safety net”.
The document stated that workers in the gig sector have increased to 12 million in fiscal year (FY) 2025, from 7.7 million in FY 2021. The growth of 55 per cent is driven by smartphone penetration among over 800 million users and 15 billion UPI transactions per month.
“Now representing over 2 per cent of the total workforce in India, growth of gig workers outpaces overall employment, with non-agricultural gigs projected to constitute 6.7 per cent of the workforce by 2029-30, contributing ₹2.35 lakh crore to GDP,” it noted.
According to a NITI Aayog report, the share of high-skilled gig workers is expected to be 27.5 per cent by 2030. For low-skilled workers, it is projected to be 33.8 per cent by 2030.
“While the gig economy is booming, income volatility persists, leading to challenges in accessing credit. Financial inclusion also lags behind for gig workers. They have ‘thin-file’ credit access, which remains a concern. Platform algorithms control work allocation, performance monitoring, wages, and supply-demand matching, raising concerns about algorithmic biases and burnout,” the Survey found. “About 40 per cent of gig workers report earnings below ₹15,000 per month,” it added.
While the gig economy is booming, income volatility persists, leading to challenges in accessing credit, the report said.
Gig workers, the Survey said, are classified as ‘freelancers’, ‘independent contractors’ or ‘platform partners’, making it difficult to apply conventional labour market definitions and regulations.
It observed that defining the gig workers in this manner, deprives them of employment benefits such as social security, paid leave, minimum hours and health insurance, leading to poor job security and lower incomes.
The document said policy interventions are needed precisely targeting these areas, as historically India has recognised this workforce as informal labour — not covered by existing labour laws.
It added that the Code on Social Security 2020 (CSS) comes in by formally recognising gig and platform workers and providing for social security schemes for them.
“The CSS provides legal acknowledgement to these workers and lays the foundation for establishing their rights and protections. While the law recognises gig and platform workers as a distinct category, it treats them as a largely homogeneous group, whereas in practice the workforce is highly segmented by skill,” it said.
Policy should now prioritise upward mobility of low‑skilled workers through upskilling, move into better-paying jobs, and make gig work a stable, reliable income source.
The Survey found that limited skilling and fears of job losses due to technological advances such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) add to worker vulnerability.
Another challenge it recognised for gig workers is limited access to credit and productive assets crucial for the workers to access better gas. It observed that many cannot upgrade from low-to-medium skilled gigs owing to lack of bike, car or other specialised equipment.
It recommends platforms and employers to co-invest in assets and training that could potentially help workers progress into more secure, higher-quality jobs.
“It is important to help gig workers manage unstable incomes. They require basic financial planning support, including access to low-cost emergency savings schemes, portable social security benefits, and budgeting or financial literacy programmes. The market should be encouraged to offer more flexible and agile financial products that consider the income patterns of gig workers,” it said.
Finding that online platforms have become an essential aspect of the gig-market infrastructure, this concentration of power raises concerns over fees, algorithms and worker protections.
“Policy should address this through competition rules, data access, and algorithmic transparency, while reorganising the social contract so that gig work benefits workers more fairly, adding that it can reduce the cost gap between regular and gig work by limiting incentives to avoid mandatory benefits and by setting minimum per-hour or per-task earnings (including waiting time), encouraging formal employment and raising incomes for low- and medium-skilled gig workers.